


Snow

by Trouvaille



Category: Original Work
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Gore, F/M, One Word Prompts, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trouvaille/pseuds/Trouvaille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow

It was December, 1924 when he arrived in London, just turned nineteen and thirsting for blood.

His employers had given him time to acclimate to the city. He could read English better than he could speak; as such it took him one month to learn the city. He found it easier to navigate than Cairo or Damascus. The city moved like a clock, everything straight and ordered, turning at a constant, bustling pace.

His target was a French businessman, fallen too deep in debt with all of the wrong people. They had known from the start he was a rapacious gambler, but the boss liked his blood sports. Jallal was given a gun and orders to take out his target as inconspicuously as possible. How he was to do it still posed a problem. But as he walked the streets of London, he noticed that there were more automobiles here than any other city he’d known: towering transport trucks, trollies, and taxis.

His target arrived by train the weekend of January the twenty-fourth, as predicted. The evening was chilly, even for winter, the wind sharp and biting. Jallal tailed him until he entered a hotel on the Mayfair, the Connaught. He kept careful watch from an alley across the street. The sun set quickly, smearing the moonless sky with orange, then violet. He could see someone join the man at the bar, a woman of rare and exotic beauty. Jallal could scarce tear his eyes away. She moved with such alluring, feline grace.

A black taxi pulled past the stop and around the corner. Jallal sprang from his spot, checking the sidewalks. There was no one around, he couldn’t pass up this chance. He walked down the alley, fingers wrapping around the warm handle of his 1895 Nagant revolver. He rapped on the driver’s side window with two fingers. The driver set down his food, rolling down the automobile window.

"Oy, I’m closed," the driver said through a mouthful of chips, "can’t a guy catcha—"

The suppressor reduced the report to a muffled pop; a burst of light and the driver slumped forward, a neat hole in the side of his skull. Jallal worked quickly, dragging the heavy body behind a dumpster. He used the man’s long scarf to mop up the blood and gray matter from the side window and passenger seat, throwing the dripping wool down a sewer grate just as the Frenchman and his escort were leaving the bar. Jallal took the driver’s hat from the dashboard and started the car. It’s a little too big, but shades his face.

"Taxis!” the Frenchman called. Jallal slowed to a stop at the corner. The couple clamboured into the vehicle.

For a heart-stopping moment, Jallal thought they’d noticed—But he forced his expression into something like boredom, trying to focus on something other than the hole in the glass of the passenger-side window. The streetlamps behind them glowed like cat’s eyes. Like her eyes.

The man tapped Jallal on the shoulder. “You speak English? I said, to Covent Garden, en vitesse.”

The streets were obscured by a layer of wispy, rolling fog, but Jallal knew the city well. He drove on toward Bond Street. Behind him, he could hear his target whisper things to her in French. Jallal couldn’t understand, but the woman gave a gasp of mock surprise and a playful slap. The Frenchman looked so much like a pig in his ill-fitted tweed suit, grabbing for her waist. Something like jealousy ignited in Jallal’s chest. He struggled to quell the feelings, but sped through a traffic signal, tires screeching as he avoided an oncoming automobile.

"Fool!" The Frenchman said. "What do you think you are doing? Where are we?”

"Ah…" The word escaped him. "Short-cut," Jallal said to the rearview mirror.

They had turned onto a side road. The woman looked between the two, then reached in to tickle the Frenchman’s double-chin. Her laugh was like spring water, and the answer seems to satisfy him.

The Opera House was no closer than when they started out. He had brought his passengers in a full circle around six blocks of city. They were back at the corner of the Mayfair. Jallal pulled into a back alley and reached into his jacket pocket for the revolver. He parked behind a blazing dumpster, but didn’t switch off the engine. He threw the door open.

“Out,” he commanded.

The man uttered a squealing scream, holding up his hands, already begging. Jallal blinked, cocking back the Nagant. There was a hiss of swinging steel and a quiet shunk. The man fell forward with a gasp, red gushing from a deep wound in his liver. Jallal almost dropped his gun as he noticed the woman backing away; the slit in the side of her dress, the scabbard on her thigh.

In the flickering light of fire, he could see her in full. Her white mink shawl she left in the car. She stood before him in a shimmering dress of orange silk, a long, tapered knife in her left hand. He stared at her in utter awe, and chanced a step forward, hands raised.

"Don’t think I won’t kill you," she said, green eyes blazing with all the fury of a tigress.

He looked down at his would-be target, twitching in a growing puddle of his own blood. She pressed the tip of the stiletto blade into his side.

"Wait," he said. Slowly, he removed the hat, dropped the gun, and did the only thing he could. He took her arm and pulled her into a long kiss. She smelled of jasmine and incense and… She bit his lip and brought the blade down over his knuckles.

He pulled away with a yelp, and she slammed him into the wall. She licked her lips, blade playing over his jugular, but didn’t strike. He met her gaze unblinkingly, whispered something in her ear, lilting Arabic. He smiled. She knew.

"What did you call me?"

"Beautiful. A goddess."

"And you are a witness." She considered him for a long while. "Fool boy," she said finally, and gestured for him to follow.

She brought him through the back entrance of the Connaught, to a corner room on the second floor. They made love like demons, drunk on the copper scent of blood permeating their skin. Her skin was smooth as surf-washed stones, warm and soft and lithe. They lay finally sated, her lips stained red from where she had bitten his collarbone, licked his bleeding fingers clean.

Fat snowflakes began to fall on the open windowsill.

"Tell me your name?" Jallal said, eyelids drifting closed.

She lit a cigarette and put it to his lips.

“Call me Ifrit.”


End file.
